All I have is for drama

The theater scrims! I have two

of them to get donw by Wednesday... so that's all for daily painting at the moment...
A full day of work... I look like hell. It must be Monday! Yikes!

Looking for the reset button

Sunday was a day I sort of shut down and checked out... Started with yoga in the park. When the instructor Peter was not looking I sort of spaced out on the birds in the trees. Afterwards Michael and I took a walk to a local bakery for breakfast. I ate a chocolate croissant ... then, when I should have painted, I packed for the beach. Splurged on a bag of ruffle potato chips. If I was going to be lazy and unproductive I figured why not go the whole way...eat chips and chocolate... people watch and ignore the narratives I am supposed to be writing for work.

Once we got home, Michael made Puttanesca. My godson, such a young sweet guy, in town for an engineering gig on south beach, came for dinner and he brought fresh snapper fillets from his morning fishing excursion. The whole day was filling in a non painting way.

Tired yet still showing up

A rose for the theater

Love drawing in blue tape and working big.

Some things are perfect for Florence

... Never again will I try to teach fresco painting in Miami. What was I thinking?! We only have 45 minute long classes, so that alone must have meant the option was out...but ...no! I figured (with my faulty math) that my art history class could come early and stay late and I even emailed teachers on either side of their schedules for permission to keep them longer...It could have worked, but the weather! We were hit with torrential rains, flooding the patio, seeping into the room... record amounts of moisture in the air! I rushed to my classroom at dawn and slathered the plaster on the panels praying they'd be ready and dry to the touch by noon. Though the kids may have been disappointed not doing the plaster part, they did enjoy the pouncing and painting. It wasn't a total fiasco, but we should have been in Florence.

Waiting for signs of fall in Miami

Up north, my dad tells me, the cider press is running, and the leaves are falling. I miss the autumn and have asked him to send me leaves in the mail. Down here we wait for signs of the vulture's migration. Lots of birds are arriving daily. I saw six pink spoonbills in the air yesterday.
Me and my flamingos meanwhile feel pretty earthbound and heavy.

Where do Pineapples come from?

Some restore themselves with a tropical drink at 5. Others with a walk through a park.
Wandering through the Fairchild Botanical Gardens, I inhale the fresh oxygen and soak up the plant energy through my feet, my eyes, and my breath. It's a wonderful place that seems miles away from the city of Miami. I feel like I am on an island in the Caribbean, one rich with a variety of palms, lizards, butterflies, and fragrances. Lucky for me it is just down the road from my apartment.

Every time I visit I see something new. Right now is the season of pineapples, and for once I am lucky enough to see them almost ripe on their stalks. I remember my uncle Freddy taking me to a house, on the way to his mother's in Haiti, that had an approach lined with spiky short bushes, and he explained to me that they were what pineapples came from. I found it, at the time, hard to picture. So this one is for my uncle Freddy in heaven.